An author, whether traditionally published or self-published, must consider the possibilities with business succession planning and estate planning. Outside of the challenges of leaving asset transfer entirely up to the state for all your other property, authors also have the additional challenge of figuring in their royalty payments and copyrights for their books.

Protecting Your Author Business

Having all of your business processes, systems and passwords in your head does you no good if something happens to you and a family member needs to step into the role of managing these relatively quickly.

When you have no estate plan in place, you leave your family members to try to figure out these complicated details. With no will the state is responsible for determining what happens to your assets. If you have done one step of the estate planning process, such as writing down all of your business accounts and passwords, for your author business or online details, that leaves the heir who takes over for you with a sheet of paper and no ideas beyond that.

This means that for some short period of time the proceeds of the sales from your book or your royalties will go into your bank account. In addition, any ongoing advertisements, such as Amazon ads or Facebook promotions that you might have been running at the time you pass away, will continue running until those companies have been notified that the primary author has passed away.

This can create a complicated web of online materials and passwords that is very difficult for your loved ones to sort out. Don’t make this be something they have to consider or try to work through on their own. Having an estate plan in place makes it possible for someone to step in quickly and gain access to all of your necessary accounts to take the proper steps.

How to Get Started with Author Estate Planning

When it comes to author estate planning, there are a couple of important things you can do. First of all, you can make plans and arrangements so that it’s easier for your loved ones during a difficult time. It’s important to view your author reputation much like a business and all businesses face succession issues. These succession issues have to do with who will take over or key employees and managers if something happens to the owner.

Viewing your online publishing venture like a business will help you to take a step back and decide what needs to be incorporated into your author estate planning process. Here at Royalty Reminder, we help you keep track of all the documents, contracts and royalty agreements from all of your different publishers so that it can be streamlined and easy for your personal representative or estate executor to step into the process and help when needed.

When you’re answering the difficult questions around how to manage your literary estate after you pass away, there are a few points you need to keep in mind that can be helpful when naming your literary executor.

First of all, provide clear instructions in your trust or will for your literary executor that explains their specific authority related to your literary work and associated literary property after you pass away. The main executor will otherwise have control of all of the work, and this means that your main executor will have fiduciary responsibility that serves all of the estate.

What is a Literary Executor?

A literary executor might not be necessary for every author. This is the case if your estate is not complex or doesn’t generate a significant amount of income. The primary executor of your trust or will might be able to manage estate disposition and ongoing literary estate activities if it is not complicated.

A good benchmark to keep in mind when thinking about hiring a literary executor is to consider whether or not your estate has less than $100,000 in it and if the copyright-protected work produces very little income, that doesn’t call for literary executor. If there is substantial income from multiple books, however, or other complicated circumstances, it’s a good idea to appoint a specific literary executor.

If your estate includes various licenses and published books under your intellectual property, a literary executor has the responsibility of notifying licensees and publishers about your death and determining how royalties should be paid.

Decide whether a trust or will includes a list of literary properties and in what manner. The organizations or persons to which rights will be passed and copyrights granted after you pass away should also be named. Don’t forget about cover art contracts as well, so that there are no conflicts about who owns the cover art. A literary executor can be very beneficial when you have multiple people inside your estate who may be benefitting from your literary works.

Furthermore, don’t forget to create a list of the online accounts that your executor might need to review. This includes social media, online forms, passwords, and websites. Don’t forget to include domain registrations and expiration lists. If you have unpublished works inside your literary estate that you hope will remain unpublished, then name these specifically.

Remember that the term of your individual copyright is for the life of the author plus a renewal term of 70 years. If the next of kin are dead when the author passes away, the literary executor has to file the renewal in the name of the estate. Copyright renewal rights typically vest based on the author’s heirs. At Royalty Reminder, we strive to help gather all of the necessary materials that you will need to protect your license rights.

There’s no question about it, estate planning is not a favorite subject for the vast majority of people. Avoidance is a natural response for anything that has to do with morbidity, and people are largely uncomfortable talking about what happens to their property after they pass away.

However, for authors, it is critical to think about tying up affairs and disposing off the estate assets appropriately. This is especially important for authors because writers have additional assets that many other people do not in the form of intellectual property rights that make estate planning even more essential and potentially complicated.

Author IP Rights

You want to make sure that the literary works you have created during your life are treated based on your wishes after you pass away.

The primary intellectual property that writers own is the copyright to their literary works. A copyright lasts for the author’s life in addition to 70 years. This means that this is a very long window for the value of your asset to be viable. You want to ensure that you have a plan for your intellectual property and that it is cared for after your death.

Basic Estate Planning Tools for Authors

Every adult should have a valid will or trust, and that includes authors as well.

Without a trust or will in place, your estate distribution is governed by the intestate succession statutes within your house and within your estate and will pass on to your heirs according to the court’s wishes.

Preparing a trust or a will is not a difficult or complicated process, but it is one that is extremely important. Trusts and wills each have advantages and disadvantages. A literary estate includes multiple different components, and all of these should be discussed with knowledgeable professionals so that you can have a comprehensive plan in place. When thinking about your individual property, you might pass on the physical copies of your books, such as the first editions to beloved loved ones, but you still need to answer the questions around who will continue to own your copyright and the potential benefits of your book continuing to generate royalties after you pass away.

If you are an author who has multiple books, and many complicated and structured royalty agreements, it is imperative that you have thought about your literary estate plan. Royalty Reminder exists to help you keep an organized structure to all of your literary agreements and to help you answer some of the complicated questions around the estate planning process for authors. Continue to stay tuned to our blog and check out our resources that are designed to help authors and writers make the most of all their intellectual property.

 

Have you seen the new adaptation of Little Women? There’s a charming moment towards the end that caught my attention – and I hope it catches yours, too, author. 

Louisa May Alcott is an interesting personality to begin with. Despite women’s limited rights at the time she lived, her family desperately needed the money from her writing for their support. Like most authors, she’d taken some hits from the publishing world: Publisher James T. Field, for example, told her to stick to teaching and not to pursue writing full time. And like many other great authors, she pushed on anyway, proving him wrong: she produced over 300 literary works in her lifetime. 

If you didn’t know, Louisa May Alcott’s home can be visited in Massachusetts, where it’s easy to see the inspiration for the story!

In the movie, Jo March finishes her book and visits the publisher to sell it – this is one of the many points where Little Women mirrors Alcott’s own life. The publisher made her an outright offer at the same time she was negotiating the publishing deal, and she turned it down. Alcott later spoke of the real-life version of this interaction, noting, “[An honest publisher and a lucky author, for the copyright made her fortune, and the “dull book” was the first golden egg of the ugly duckling. 1885.–L. M. A.]” 

She registered the copyright for the Little Women stories after they were published. The copyright term at the time was 28 years with the option for a 14-year renewal for surviving heirs. Louisa May Alcott never got married, but adopted her nephew later in life, a move that some biographers believe was a move to protect her copyright. 

She also kept the copyright on many of her other literary works, including a volume of stories for her niece, Lulu, where she also reaped the benefit of doing so. 

Alcott had legally adopted her widowed sister’s son, John, to whom she willed her copyrights, allowing the ongoing income to go to Anna, niece Lulu, John, and Anna’s other son Fred. It’s said that she knew she was going to pass away soon and made these moves to ensure her work continued to benefit her family. 

She passed away in 1888, and that nephew submitted a renewal for the copyright for Little Women on a 14-year renewal term in 1895. That copyright expired in October, 1924, but continued to benefit her loved ones because her nephew owned the rights and kept them active within the family. 

 

If only so many modern authors had the foresight to protect their interests and to educate their loved ones about it! 

 

Why This Matters for You 

Here’s what’s most important about this story: Louisa May Alcott, an independent woman many years ahead of her time, knew that she needed to be smart and diligent about keeping the rights to her books. 

She saw the potential for her own talent to pay off in the copyright and knew that, even with a tempting offer to hand it right over to the publisher, that it was better to negotiate to keep that for herself. Likewise, savvy authors today have to read the fine print of their contracts and agreements to know exactly what rights they do hold and also recognize the power of protecting those rights for generations to come. Alcott’s focused pursuit of her own rights is an example to all.

Do you want more information on how to protect your own intellectual property? Check out Royalty Reminder today- we’re here to help you organize all your agreements and protect your work.